Brand New Colony: Leading Up to Us
by sekai no yakusoku
Summary: He smiled at her throughout it all: a waltz, a shared silence, and just another one of those near death experiences...and much more. He smiled at her throughout it all. So what else could she do but smile back? [RaexRob]


This is yet another song driven fic to tie people over while I brood over the next chapters of **"Winner Takes All"** and **"For Nothing, For Everything...For the Birds"**

Also I am considering an epilogue to the one-shot **"Nothing Better"** even though I guess that makes it no longer a one-shot...just to answer some questions without getting in trouble haha...a clarification as to the aftermath.

Anyway, hope this fluff is decent enough, even it already being said that it is indeed cryptic fluff at best. Yeah, that was I guess, a warning in case you don't like what kind of thing this is, which is pretty much just a small mess of lovey-dovey vagueness.

But I'm feeling formless today, so forgive me please.

I'm sorry. Comment if you've the time/review. Thank you very much.

-Rei

Disclaimers, et cetera:

Teen Titans: not mine!

Song: Brand New Colony by The Postal Service

Pairing: Oh come on. Who do you think? Heh. BIRDS!

* * *

"**Brand New Colony"**

or

"**Leading up to Us"**

* * *

_I'll be the grapes fermented, bottled and  
Served with the table set in my finest suit  
Like a perfect gentleman._

He smiled at her like she was the only one there even though they were but two children swirling in the circles of adults, all glittered and golden-lit. They were at his twentieth birthday celebration and he was doing his best to blend in and show his dance partner a good time all at once. He did the latter pretty well, even if he did not accomplish the first, since he and his dance partner were easily the most handsome couple there, except that they weren't a couple of course.

_I'll be the fire escape that's bolted to the  
Ancient brick where you will sit  
And contemplate your day._

He smiled at her as if he knew what she was thinking, and he probably did as they stood in easy quiet, staring out across a new dawn like they often did, sun glazing their faces in caramel tints. They were on the roof of the tower and he was doing his best not to ramble about hope and other things because he knew she had a preference for what could only be defined as an amicable silence. He was still doing his best to repress his ramble when she told him she thought it was going to be a beautiful day and he all too happy to agree with her, setting off at high speed on that self-same ramble he'd been avoiding, knowing well that her comment was her permission for him to do so.

_I'll be the water wings that save you if you  
Start drowning and an open tab when your  
Judgment's on the brink._

He smiled at her, knowing she was safe as he pulled her up with two arms, hands clasped around her wrists, refusing to let her take the incidental plunge to the concrete below after being blasted by another petty villain, caught off guard. They were fighting someone new and it was a tough battle that ended with them and their other teammates victorious, if worn and later when the others had dropped off into peaceful rest, she let him bandage the gash on the otherwise smooth skin of her stomach, even though she didn't need him to.

_I'll be the phonograph that plays your favorite  
Albums back as you're lying there_

_Drifting off to sleep, drifting off to sleep..._

He smiled at her without even looking as she stood in the doorway of the training area, watching him in her quiet way that was not at all unsettling because they shared a comfort with each other that didn't require voices. They were thinking about how quiet the tower had become since an alien girl left to care for the home planet she was so devoted to, since a changeling and a cybernetic man had taken to joining other cities, one far east and one underwater, respectively, and they were wondering at how they missed them, but at the same time, did not mind having only each other for company.

_I'll be the platform shoes, undo what heredity's done to you  
You won't have to strain to look into my eyes._

He smiled as she stood on his feet because she was too tired to pretend enough to keep up the waltz at yet another glitter fest—his twenty-second birthday as it were—that she had so generously agreed to attend on his arm, as a friend of course. They were trying to distinguish each other's scents from their own, and failing with half-smiles.

_I'll be your winter coat buttoned and zipped  
Straight to the throat with the collar up so  
You won't catch a cold._

He smiled at her, noting her ears pink at the edges in the midnight snow, the only parts of her not well covered in the dark blue of her scarf or her coat or her mittens or other such December apparel. They were Christmas shopping, for each other no less, but she had told him candidly that there was no point in them trying to search and find something that in the end they'd want to return anyway and that it made more sense to point and pretend to forget come Christmas morning and at all of that, he had only continued to smile.

_I want to take you far from the cynics in this town  
And kiss you on the mouth._

He smiled at her as she embraced him in the middle of the empty living room and they disappeared in the shadow of a great, fearsome and beautiful raven, only to appear on the roof, rainbow overhead as uncharacteristic as she was, and more stunning for it. They were twenty-four and twenty-three, him and her, and they each knew they had been much older than that for some time now, but contented themselves with being just twenty-four and just twenty-three for the last five minutes of the fading rainbow.

_We'll cut our bodies free from the tethers of  
This scene, start a brand new colony._

He smiled at her as he trailed his hand over her familiar shape, moonlight mingling on their sheets with the shadows of soft clouds and the residual glow of something only they two shared, even if she said it was a mistake with the coming morning. They were not thinking, but it was the first time they would have given up that pastime in twenty-five and twenty-four years and it was bound to happen sooner or later.

_Where everything will change, we'll give  
Ourselves new names. _

He smiled at her as she tied her hair back, because she had let it grow out after some time, that nighttime mistake long since learned to be a good one. They were still in the tower after all that time and she was at the stove steaming over a not so steaming kettle because he had gone into her room without asking and he refrained from commenting that she didn't mind him in her room when he was there too and hid his next smile as she threw an oven mitt at him with a scowl.

_Identities erased.  
_

He smiled at her with his eyes, because he finally could, the blue of them stretching forever and ever until they melted into an unmistakable amethyst like the sea meeting the storm in a brilliant crash of light. They were nearing twenty-seven and twenty-six and had shed their capes and masks and hoods for something without a T shaped tower and outside of a city called Jump.

_The sun will heat the grounds, under our bare  
Feet in this brand new colony._

He smiled at her when she laughed and the only reaction from things around her was for his own voice to join hers. They were outside at night since she only liked to be outside when the harshness of the sun was dimmed through the facets of the moon and she walked across a trickling creek near their campsite, beckoning for him to join her even as he moved in her direction, preempting her request.

_Brand new colony...  
_

He smiled at her because he had finally gotten the courage to do the most frightening thing he would ever do in his entire life, because he had finally told her the three words he never thought he would say to anyone, because as he did so, everything changed. They were in Paris—or somewhere equally romantic—and he was twenty-nine to her twenty-eight as he chased her through a city engrained in history, catching up to circle his arms around her waist and pull her back to him like the most perfect of puzzle pieces.

_Everything will change  
Everything will change  
Everything will change_

He smiled at her as she allowed him the smallest of smiles back and he fell even more in love, liking that smile of hers because it was so small and only for him to see. They were Richard Grayson and Raven Roth and they were far from where they had begun, standing on the edge and in the middle all at once, lost in each other and changed beyond sensibility.

But that heroic sensibility wasn't necessary like it once was.

Only a very human, very mortal understanding...and the two birds had that in spades, the color of sapphires and violets.

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_Like? Dislike?_


End file.
